Lyra Goes On Holiday
by Daisy4
Summary: Lyra goes on holiday with her schoolfriends. She little knows what a cosmic vortex she is going to be sucked into!
1. Off On Holiday

LYRA GOES ON HOLIDAY

by

DAISY

Dear Readers, I'm writing this as English as I can because I got told off for being American last time. So that is why it says HOLIDAY and not VACATION in the title. The story actually happens in summer. I hope you like it. Daisy

Lyra sat up in her bed. It was morning. "Hooray!!!" she cried, "It's morning, and it's the first day of the holidays."

"No more Latin, no more French! No more sitting on the old school bench!" cried Pantalaimon, her beloved pine-marten daemon.

Lyra leapt out of her bed. She was wearing pyjamas with a floral pattern and they were very pretty.

Lyra had a wash but she didn't really need it, as she was clean now that she was at Saint Sophia's and not a mudlark any more.

"Ugh, porridge!" she cried at breakfast. She thought that, as it was the holidays, she would not have to eat porridge at breakfast; but no.

"It is good for you, Lyra," said Dame Hannah. "It helps keep you regular." She had toast, marmalade, and tea too.

After breakfast they went to the station and caught a train to the country. There were Lyra and Pantalaimon, and her friends Mary and Mabel. They were going to stay at a ranch in the country.

When they got to the farm (in a cart - they rode on the back with their bags), there was the farmer's wife with a big rosy-cheeked smile!

"Hello girls," she said. "Welcome to Brookfield Farm. There is bags of room in the farm and I have lots of bedrooms."

"Oh, no!" said the friendly girls. "We want to room together!"

So that was settled and they all had a big room in the attic. By the way, Mary's daemon was Albrecht (he was a pussy cat) and so was Mabel's. His name was Brian.

They had a super yummy lunch of beef, and then there was lashings of ice cream, but there were cherries on top. They made Lyra sad - she was thinking of her Will.

Just then there was a loud barking. It was Timmy the Dog!!! "This is Timmy," said the farmer's wife, whose name was Jill. "He is so smart some people think he's a daemon but he's just a dog really. He will show you round the farm."

Timmy wagged his tail so much, they all laughed.

They looked round the farm. It was super! "Gosh," said Mabel and Mary. "This farm is very nice."

Lyra said nothing. She was still upset by the cherries. Mary and Mabel knew this so they didn't say anything.

There were cows and horses and lambs and sheep and fields, and it wasn't at all like Oxford or the North Pole.

That night they all went to sleep in their attic room. "This is a smashing holiday," said Pan. "Yes," said Lyra. "I hope we stay here for ever. If only Will were here too…"

Shall I write some more (make it a longer story)?

Love to you all,

Daisy


	2. On The Bridge

Dear Readers,

A reviewer said that Lyra seemed too 'girly' in this story. This chapter explains why.

Daisy

It was the next morning. Lyra, Mabel and Mary had had a splendid farmhouse breakfast (with _no_ porridge!) and were sitting on the edge of a bridge which crossed a stream. If they had been living in Will's world they'd have been playing Poohsticks, but they didn't live in Will's world so they weren't. Timmy the dog was paddling in the stream.

"Lyra," said Mabel, suddenly.

"Yes, Mabel," answered Lyra.

"We've noticed that you're different this term," said Mary.

"How different?" asked Lyra, questioningly.

"You've mellowed out," said Mabel.

"And put on weight," said Mary.

"And stopped shouting at everyone all the time and crying all night in the dorm," said Mabel.

"Why?" asked both girls together.

Lyra was feeling very threatened by the questioning girls, but she remembered what Dame Hannah had said to her in Counseling and she wasn't angry, nor did she throw anything at the inquisitive girls like she did before.

"It's like this," Lyra explained. "I had this, like, really intense experience. I saved all the worlds and fell in love…"

"Ahhh!!!" sighed Mary and Mabel.

"And I was still only twelve. I'd been to all kinds of places and met this wonderful boy…"

"Ooohhh!!!" gasped Mabel and Mary.

"And then we had to split up…"

"You told us," said Mabel.

"Thousands of times," added Mary.

"You were a real pain about it," added Mabel.

"We'd completely had enough," added Mary.

"I know," said Lyra. "I was not the most popular girl in the school."

"You were a nasty bad-tempered little baggage," said Mary.

"We couldn't stand you," said Mabel.

"Then Dame Hannah had a talk with me. She said that I'd done all the grown-up things too soon, and if I wanted to be a happy adult someday I should make up for all the bits of my childhood that I'd missed out on. She told me to let go of the past and just try being a teenage kid for a while."

"That's what she's done," said Pan. "It gets on my nerves sometimes but it's good for her so I don't mind. Why don't we all go into the village and drink some fizzy pop? I'll watch you."

"Super!" cried all three girls together.

"Woof!" barked Timmy.

Next - what is in the village?


	3. The Weirdness

This is where it starts to get strange…

Daisy

Lyra and Pantalaimon and Mary and Albrecht and Mabel and Brian and Timmy the dog walked down the typical country road until they came to the village.

The village was very pretty.  It was full of typical English country cottages; the sort that are white with black lines and have a roof made of straw.  All the cottages had pretty roses in the gardens.

There was a tavern, also called a Pub, and it was called The Bull and it had a sign with a picture of a big strong bull on it swinging in the breeze.  Lyra and her friends couldn't go into the Pub because they were underage, so they wondered what to do.

Just then Timmy barked.  There was a shop!  Not a big one like they had in Oxford; the sort that is on lots of floors and is called a department shop, but a little one with just one window and one door.

Luckily the girls had some Sovereigns, so they went into the shop and bought chewy candies and fizzy pop that was orange flavor.  Then they went and sat on the village green.

While they were sitting and drinking their pop, Lyra saw that the bright sunshine that had been all around them was less bright.  "Oh, no," she thought.  "It is clouding over and there may be rain later.  What a shame; and on our holiday too!"

But when she looked up she could see no clouds at all.  It was a typically cloudlessly bright, warm, dry English summer's day.  

"Look!" cried Pantalaimon suddenly, pointing towards the village pond on the other side of the village green.

Lyra looked in horrified fascination.  There were pockets of weirdness drifting towards them in the gentle summer's breeze!  One of them bumped into Mabel.

"!gnineppah si tahw ,pleH" cried poor Lebam as the weirdness overwhelmed her.

Lyra was frozen to the spot.  She could sense the weirdness looking at her, wondering if it should take her over next!

What can this mean?  What will happen now?


	4. A Voice From The Past

Lyra must learn a hard truth…

Lyra looked at the weirdness.  The weirdness looked at her malevolently.

"What shall I do?" she thought.  "What can this be?  Is it Specters?"

"No," replied Pan, who could hear her every thought.  "It doesn't feel like Specters."

Mary gave a gurgling cry as a weirdness sucked her up.  Lyra was all alone now.

It was hopeless.  Lyra felt helpless.  She stepped back, but the glowing swirling saffron weirdness followed her.

"Just take me!" she cried helplessly.  "Eat me!  My life is worth nothing!"

The weirdness grinned, deep in its belly.  Tendrils of strangeness extended themselves from its formless shape towards Lyra's stupefied head.

There was a flash of white!  A great massive shape interposed itself between the frightened girl and the horrifying globule of wrongness that threatened her.

"Lyra Silvertongue!"

Where had she heard that voice before?

"It is I, Iorek Byrnison."

"Iorek!  My dear!  Are you real?  Are you really here?"

"I am as real as I need to be.  Now, listen to me, Lyra.  You have forgotten who you are.  You are losing that which makes you special."

"What do you mean, Iorek?"

"When you decided to become an ordinary silly trivial little schoolgirl, you put your past behind you.  You, of all people, must not do that.  Your past is what you are.  Tell me - when did you last call yourself _Silvertongue?_"

"I - I don't know, Iorek.  I can't remember."

"I am ashamed of you, Lyra.  The Lyra Silvertongue that I knew would not have given up so quickly.  Be true to yourself!  Fight!  Fight and die fighting!  Or give up and die before your time."

The shape faded!  "Iorek, don't leave me!" cried Lyra, desperately.

"It's just you and me now, Lyra," said Pan.  The weirdness loomed over them both.  It was getting closer and closer!!

OMG!  Can Lyra get her act together in time?


	5. A Way Out?

Dear Reeders,

Before I go eny farthr I wont too thank my Mom an my Remidiel Techer Ms Green four to help mee with my Spelling and Grammer and all.  Ive put this bt in with not Teling tem.

Dad if U see this plese cal. We Miss U.

Daisy

Use your imagination…

There were only seconds left for Lyra and Pan to act.  Already eddies of strange were wrapping themselves around her feet.  Already the sky was turning yellow as the mass of amorphous terror reached over her and Pan to swallow them up.

Time was slowing down…

"Pan, what can we do?"

"We can think.  What would Will have done?"

"That's easy.  He'd have cut a window with the Knife and we'd have escaped to another world.  But Pan, he's not here."

"There must be another way."

"What did the Angel Xaphania say?"

"She said we could never use the Knife again."

"And?"

"That we had to learn to travel using our imagination."

"Then we'd better imagine our way out of here.  And fast!!!"

Lyra pretended she was reading the alethiometer.  She twirled the needles and dials in her mind; only she was twirling space instead.  Chaos and insatiable greedy evil were only inches from her now.  The weirdness laughed inside her head; now high-pitched and giggling, now deep and thundery.  Lyra felt sick, but she kept on trying.

A dark passage was opening up in the cloud of evil!  Lyra was making a tunnel through space by using her imagination!  As the first tendrils of the wrongness were starting to force themselves into her nostrils she lunged forward into the dark passage she had made.  She seemed to fall forward forever.

Everything was black!  She was floating in nothingness!  She could feel and touch nothing!

"Pan," cried Lyra.  "Where are we?  Pan!  Pan!  Pan?"

But there was no reply.  Pan was gone.  And a nearly-forgotten pain wrenched Lyra's heart.

Where is Lyra?  Where is Pan?


	6. A Cry In The Dark

Out of the frying pan…

Lyra was fighting the fear that was threatening to reduce her to a miserable blob.  She could see nothing, feel nothing, and hear nothing.  She was weightless, blind and deaf.  She could have been buried alive, the coffin-lid just above her head.  And, worst of all, she was separated by an infinite distance from Pantalaimon, her dear daemon.  Her heart was aching with a burning desire to be reunited with him.

Slowly the fear went away.  She realized that she was still alive - if 'alive' meant anything any more.  And although she seemed to be nowhere, she could still use her mind.

She cried out with her brain-elements, "Pan!  Pan, where are you?"

She listened with her mind.  Nothing.  There was nothing, but her - Lyra.  So she cried out her name:

"Lyra!  Lyra!  I am Lyra Silvertongue!"

Was that an echo?

"Lyra!"

Almost inaudible it was, yet detectable.  She put all her determination behind her mental voice.

"This is Lyra!  I am Lyra!"

Again the echo of her name, but louder, nearer.  "Lyra!"

"I am Lyra!  Who are you?"

A response.  So near.  "In life, I knew a Lyra once."

Again she cried with her mind, "Who are you?"

The mental voice replied, warm within her brain.  "In the worlds, I was known as Lord Asriel.  Here, in the Void, I have no name."

"Then you - you are my Father!"

Is this a new hope for Lyra?  Has her Dad come back to rescue her?


	7. Lyra And Lord Asriel

Is there a way out?

Lyra could not believe her luck!  It was true that she had been suddenly attacked by a shapeless Yellow Peril that had consumed her friends Mary and Mabel while they were drinking a harmless orange soda and that she was now stranded in a lightless Void of Darkness without her beloved daemon Pantalaimon.  But now she had found her Dad!!!!

"Father, is this really you?" she gasped mentally.

"If you are Lyra Silvertongue, once known as Lyra Belacqua, once a ward of Jordan College, then yes, I am Lord Asriel, your Father," came the brain-driven reply.

"I can't believe it!  But it must be true!  I'd know your voice anywhere.  But where are we?" Lyra requested of her Dad.

"Daughter, this is the Void Of Despair.  We fell into it, your Mother and me, when we brought Destruction upon the Evil of Metatron, the bad angel."

Sad was the Lord's voice, but hopeful too for Lyra.

"Where is my Mother?" Lyra inquired.

"She and I drifted apart in the Void, where there is no space," Lord Asriel's voice echoed dully in her cortex.  "There is no escape for us.  We are doomed to an eternity of un-life in the Void.  Now you have joined us."

"No!"  cried Lyra, the appalled, the horrified.  "I cannot stay here forever!"

"Stay with us!" brain-spoke her Father.  "We can be a family again.  Listen!  I will call your Mother."  And he began to call for Lyra's Mother Marisa with his neurons.

"Father, I imagined my way into this Void.  I'm going to try to imagine my way out of it again.  Why don't you try too?  We could be together in our world."  Lyra was hopeful.

"No, Lyra."  Lyra's Mother's voice was heard, sweet like liquid syrup.  "Join us.  Be with us forever.  Together in the warm darkness forever."

Lyra was torn in two.  Should she stay in the anguished Void with her newly-rediscovered and oh-so-longed-for parents or try to return to the worlds of blessed light?

"Father, Mother!" she cried at last, her heart bursting.  "It's no good!  I belong in the real living world.  I must go!  Please; say I can go!"

"Yes, go!  You live!  Go!"  Lord Asriel's anguished voice was turned to Mrs Coulter.  "You stay!  We belong dead!"

How can Lyra bring herself to abandon her new-found parents so soon?


	8. Escape - To Where?

Lyra must say goodbye to her Father L

Lyra sensed her parents going away.  It sounded like they were arguing.

"Goodbye Father and Mother," she brainwaved.  "Maybe I can come and see you again soon."

She concentrated on twirling space with her imaginary hands.  It was hard, but she kept trying.  She thought of England, of summer, of warm winds and green trees.  She thought of real people with real voices.  She didn't think of the village or the farm because she didn't want to be swallowed up by a strange again.

A light!  A light was growing in the Void!  A bright light that pulled her towards itself with an irresistible suction!

Whoosh!  Thump!!

"Cor blimey, Guvnor, what's this?"

"Lor, lumme, strike a light, I dunno!"

Lyra looked up.  There were intensely glowing bright lights pouring down on her.  All around her were standing typically lovable red-faced Cockney costermongers, carrying baskets on their heads.  There were two Bobbies standing by a pillar, waving their nightsticks.  There was a dirty girl with a basket of flowers.  And they were all looking at her!

She was in Covent Garden Market in London!  There were market stalls piled high with typical English vegetables like tomatoes, bell peppers and zucchini!  There were carts with horses in front of them, eating oats!

Then two things happened.

A voice shouted "Cut!"

And Lyra realized that none of the people had daemons.

A man with a purple scarf and face strode up to her.  He was very angry.  "I don't know what you think you're doing, little girl," he bellowed, "but you can GET OFF MY SET!"

Two burly men picked Lyra up and threw her pitifully out of the door.  There was a notice above it.  It said SOUND STAGE 2 in printing and underneath that it said MY FAIR LADY in scrawly writing.  Lyra had seen movies, but she didn't know how they were made, so she had no idea what had happened.

One thing she did know.  She was in a world without daemons.  And that could mean only one thing…

Wow!  Has Lyra imagined herself into Will's world?


	9. Lyra Finds A Friend

Is this really Will's world?

Could it really be true?  Had Lyra really imagined herself into Will's world?  She was full of anguished joy that she might be going to see her beloved Will again.  

There was still one thing that she had to worry about.  She had no daemon.  She was still apart from her beautiful Pantalaimon.  And although, witch-like, she could live away from her daemon and he could live away from her it was a terrible strain and she knew that sooner or later she would die if she did not get herself back together with him.

Right now, she had even more worries.  She was stranded in a strange world she knew not where with no money, no spare clothes and not even a toothbrush.  Where was she going to sleep?  Where was she going to get food to eat?

"Are you all right, dear?"  A friendly voice suddenly broke in on her reverie.

Lyra looked up.  A dark-haired young woman of about twenty-seven was looking at her inquiringly.

"I don't know," she said ignorantly.  

"You do look dazed," said the young woman.  "Come down to the commissary with me and have a malted milk."

They walked past the buildings to the commissary.  They got milk and crackers from the counter and the young woman paid.  They sat down.  Lyra drank the malted milk thirstily and ate the crackers greedily.

"Ok, sweetie," said the young woman, briskly.  "Let's do the introductions.  I'm Elsa Manchester, and I'm a production assistant here at Megalopolis Pictures.  That's me.  Now it's your turn."

"I'm Lyra Silvertongue," Lyra replied.

"What a pretty name!" gushed Elsa, eagerly.

"Thank you.  It was given to me by a bear.  Please, where are we?"

Elsa looked at Lyra more closely.  "I guess you're more dazed and confused than I thought.  Though, there are plenty of dazed and confused people around here.  All right, we're in the commissary of Megalopolis Pictures, which is in Burbank, which is part of Greater Los Angeles, which is in California, which is in the United States, which is on Earth, which orbits a small unregarded yellow sun in the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy.  Lyra, I don't think you're in Kansas any more."

"I don't know Kansas.  I want to be in Brytain."

"A Brit, eh?  I thought you talked funny."  Elsa sat quietly for a while.  Then:

"Do you have any relatives or friends here?" she asked.

Lyra thought for a moment.  "Only you," she said trustingly.

"I must be crazy to say what I'm going to say now," said Elsa.  "Look, I'm at the end of my shift and I live only half an hour away.  Do you want to stop over at my place?"

Lyra looked at Elsa.  If only she had the alethiometer!  Then she would be able to tell if Elsa had wicked intentions towards her.  There was no choice, though.

"Thank you, Elsa.  You're very kind," was all she said.

Oooh!  I like Elsa!  Has Lyra found a new friend?


	10. Lyra Makes A Call

Lyra makes an important phone call.

Lyra lay on the big bed in Elsa's spare bedroom, crying anguished and bitter tears.  So much had happened!  They had gone to the car park and gotten into Elsa's car (she called it a _Miata_) and then they had shot off at a dizzying speed onto great huge roads full of other cars and trucks.  Lyra had seen cars in Will's world and even ridden in a Rolls Royce (!) but this was different.  It was noisy and frightening.  She felt nauseous when Elsa parked the car and they got out.

Elsa Manchester lived in a great tall building (she called it a _condo_) but she only had a few rooms in it, on the fifteenth floor.  They had to stand in a small room (she called it an _elevator_), which pressed against her feet and lifted her up to the fifteenth floor where Elsa lived.

Elsa gave Lyra a soda and some potato chips and a strawberry Pop Tart and then she turned on the TV.  Lyra soon caught on that it was like the movies, only smaller, and she enjoyed watching it.  Soon she was feeling at home.  Elsa's apartment was full of greenly glowing anbaric boxes with names she didn't understand like AM/FM and DVD and VCR and CD and PC and Microwave.  She was afraid to touch them in case she got an anbaric shock.

Lyra thought that the strawberry Pop Tart was the most disgusting thing that she had ever eaten, but she had learned to be a polite young lady at St Sophia's so she ate it.

"Ok," said Elsa, "Let's see if we can't find out a little more about you."

Lyra told Elsa about herself.  It sounded like lying, she knew.  Elsa looked as if she thought Lyra was telling her lies.

"So, honey, suppose you could talk to anyone in the whole world, who would you choose?"

"Will!  I'd like to talk to Will!" gasped Lyra, breathlessly.

"What's his full name?  Where does he live?"

Lyra told Elsa that Will's full name was Will Parry, but he might be living in Oxford with Mary Malone the scientist or in Winchester with Elaine, his paranoid mother.

Elsa picked up the phone and told the operator she wanted a person-to-person call to England.  It took a long time, and Elsa used words that Lyra hadn't heard since she was on the gyptian ship, but soon she was connected.

"Go ahead, sweetheart," Elsa said, handing the phone to Lyra.  She showed Lyra which end of the phone to talk into.

"Will!  Will!  It's me, Lyra.  I'm here!  I'm in your world at last!  How I've missed you!"

It was Will!  Lyra knew his voice!!  But what he said clutched coldly at her heart.

"Lyra?  Lyra who?  I've never heard of any Lyra.  Is this a practical joke?" he said.

"Will, it's me - Lyra Silvertongue.  I'm back!  I've found a way to reach your world!"

"You're bonkers!" said cruel Will.  "I've never heard of you and I don't want to talk to you.  Clear off!"

And the line went dead.  So did Lyra's poor anguished heart.

Oh no!  What's wrong with Will?


	11. In Despair

There's only one way out…

Despairing and agonized was Lyra, pained and shaking on the bed in Elsa's condo.  Her own beloved Will had said he didn't know her.  She had lost her beautiful daemon Pantalaimon and her parents again.  Everything was going wrong.

Slowly Lyra finished crying.  She remembered what the armored bear Iorek had said to her. She had to be strong.  She had to think straight.

Elsa knocked on the door.  "Are you Ok, dear? " she asked, consolingly.

"Yes, thank you," Lyra sniffed.

She sat and thought for a long time.  There were unutterable billions of worlds.  What if Elsa's world was like Will's world but wasn't really Will's world?  Then the Will she had talked to on the phone wasn't _her_ Will, just some other Will from another world.  What she had to do was imagine herself into the world of her own precious Will.

Lyra strained the sinews of her brain.  She thought of all the things she had seen in Will's world.  She thought of Mary Malone the homely but nice scientist.  She remembered the gracious Rolls-Royce automobile of Sir Charles Latrom, the wicked English knight.

Nothing happened!!!  There was no lighted tunnel to another world!

She strived harder.  Still nothing happened…

Then she had a great realization!  She knew what she had to do, but it was desperate and very scary.

She took a crayon and wrote a note to Elsa:

Dear Elsa,

Thank you for helping me when I was in a fix.  I'm going to have to go now.  

Thanks again,

Love, Lyra

Then, gathering together all her courage, she opened the window of the fifteenth floor bedroom wide open and threw herself out of it into the waiting darkness.  Elsa, who was watching 'Friends' on the TV, was transfixed by Lyra's despairing wail as she fell.

Is this the end?


	12. Into The Unknown

Fortune favors the brave!

Elsa Manchester was seized with a profoundly wrenching fear and horror in her soul.  She had only known Lyra for a few hours but she had already grown to like her very much.  Now the poor girl was certainly dead.

Elsa grabbed her anbaric cellphone and rushed out of her gracious apartment, not even locking the door behind her.  The elevator was ages coming and seemed to stop at every floor going down, the way they do when you are in a hurry.  In the end it got there and Elsa rushed out through the lobby and round the building to underneath her window.  There was nothing there!

Nothing.  No body, no marks on the ground, nothing.  It was as if Superman had seized Lyra as she fell and carried her away to his Fortress of Solitude.  Elsa shook her head.  What could she do?  She couldn't report a missing body to the cops.  They would think she was crazy or a drug addict.  She shook her head again and returned to her apartment.  LA was a crazy town where crazy things happened.  Best not to think too much about it.

It was as she passed the fifth floor and was only fractions of a second away from a certain crushing death that the eerie tunnel of imagination had opened up in front of Lyra and sucked her away to yet another world.  She breathed a sigh of relief.  Only by taking a supreme risk had she been able to escape the alien world of Elsa Manchester and Megalopolis Pictures.  Lyra had worked out in her head that she could only travel by imagination when she was in a desperate situation.  Just wanting to do it wasn't good enough.  She had to _need_ to do it.  Faced with certain death by falling, her vivid imagination had kicked in and taken her to safety.  At least, she hoped so…

She opened her eyes which she had shut when she was falling (she couldn't help it).  Where was she?  Was she in her home world?  She searched with her mentality for the echo of her soul's twin, her daemon Pantalaimon, but she could hear nothing.  Wherever she was, it wasn't home.

Then, a voice she knew well blazed upon her ravaged consciousness!

Where is Lyra now?  Is she doomed to wander forever from world to world, never going home?


	13. At Last!

"Lyra!"

"Will!"

_Dear Readers,_

_I've been told that I can't write emotions.  I'm not going to write about what Will and Lyra felt when they were reunited at last because I'll only get laughed at.  All I'm going to say is this:  If you've ever had to leave behind someone you love very much and then you've found them again you'll have a tiny idea about how they felt.  If you've never found yourself a deeply loved person I'm very very sorry for you._

_Love, Daisy_

When Lyra became aware of her surroundings again she found that she was in the elegant drawing room of Will's Mother's house.  She was drinking a cup of tea and sitting on the couch next to her Will.  He looked pretty much the same as ever.  A tad stockier, maybe.

Will and Lyra told each other about everything that had happened since they said farewell in the sad Botanic Garden in Oxford.

It slowly dawned on them both that although they were at last together again they were not much better off than they were before.  Lyra was suffering terrible pain because she was away from her essential daemon Pan.  "It hurts so much, Will," she said.  "I don't think your daemon can travel with you when you use imagination.  I think the pain of being away from him is killing me now.  We still can't stay together.  Not for long, anyway."  They both wept.  Kirjava wept too.

Will said, "We can go long distances from our daemons normally.  It must be because you and Pan are in different worlds from each other.  Is it true that you can't use imagination to travel unless you're in danger?"

"Yes," Lyra replied dejectedly.  "Every time it worked for me I was in peril of my life.  I had to get away or die."

"I kept the shards of the Knife…"

"You broke it?  Good!  But we can't use it.  _You know that!_"  Lyra kissed Will to show him she wasn't angry with him.

They sat quietly for a while, holding each other close.

"Will, love," said Lyra seriously.  "I left two of my friends in great danger.  I must try to help Mary and Mabel."

Will looked at Lyra with great respect.

"Then we must go and help them."

"We?"

"I'm not letting you go into danger by yourself," Will said with a determined air.

"Will, it's dangerous!"

"We've seen danger before.  We've fought it together before.  You must show me how to travel between the worlds."

"Yes!  I will!  Oh! But must we be always torn apart?" Lyra agonized.

"We must make the best of our time together.  Come on, let's do it!  Let's go to your world and save those poor girls!"


	14. The Parapet

Dear Readers,

You're not Will or Lyra.  _Please don't try this_.

Daisy

Lyra and Will stood side by side on the parapet of the bridge over the railroad.  They were holding hands.  They were both very scared.

"Remember, Will love.  You must imagine that you are cutting a window with the Knife, just like I imagine I am twirling space with the alethiometer dials."

"Yes, I know."

"Concentrate on my world.  Remember how you used to feel when you were in my world."

They could hear the distant sound of a train coming nearer.

"When I say jump - don't hesitate."

"You were always the leader, Lyra."

A voice behind them in the fields cried "Hoi!  You kids!  What do you think you're doing?"  A red-faced middle-aged farmer was running towards them, waving his stick fiercely.  The train was almost in sight.

"I say!  Get off that parapet!  You'll get yourselves killed, you silly blighters!"  The farmer was very close to them now.

"Kiss me, Lyra."  They kissed passionately.

"Now, Will!"

The train was almost under the bridge.  They jumped.  The totally horrified farmer ran up to the parapet, dreading what his terrified eyes would see.  There were no bodies.  The train engineer saw nothing.  Nor did the customers riding on the train.

"Ooof!"

"Ouch!  I'm not sure I ever want to do that again!"

"Pan!!!!"

It had worked!  Will and Lyra stood, lips still kissing, on the village green under the bright afternoon sunlight.  Of Mabel and Mary there was no sign.

Pantalaimon, crying with delight, flew into Lyra's arms.  Will clutched at his chest.  He could not believe how much pain there was in his heart now that he was separated by worlds from his daemon Kirjava.

"Over there!"  Will followed Lyra's pointing finger.  There they were!  A cluster of peculiarities was huddling by the ancient wall next to the medieval church.  "They swallowed up Mary and Mabel!"

"Then let's go and un-swallow them."

"No, darling, they're too dangerous.  Wait here.  I've got a better idea."

Will's appalled eyes could scarcely believe what they saw.  Lyra ran straight up to the mystically swirling bundles of pestilent excrescence.  She disappeared!  Will and Pan were left behind…

What's going on?  Does Lyra have a plan?


	15. The Curse Of Immortality

Lyra's big idea!

Lyra floated suspended in the aching Void, where her gift of imaginative transportation had carried her.

"Father!  Mother!" she called with her cerebral cells.  

Soon her parents were close to her, whatever that may mean in the unreality of the Void.

"Lyra!  You changed your mind!  You have come to join us in obscurity!" said Lord Asriel.

"We can be together for Eternity!" cried her Mother, whose legendary face could not be seen as it was totally dark in non-space.

"No, Mother.  No, Father.  I am asking you to help me," said Lyra with a determined mental expression.  Her brain looked rather like Will's, if she had been able to see it.

Lyra told her parents about the frightful danger that threatened the peaceful village where she was taking her holidays.  When she described the Awful Wrongs that had swallowed up her friends and Timmy the dog, Lord Asriel's response was immediate.

"Of them I know!" called out Lord Asriel.  "They are Vomitous Crudes from Aldeberan, the most feared evil creatures in seven galaxies.  Deadly are they, and vile!"

"Can you fight them and defeat them?" asked Lyra anxiously.

"They are half-Voidal themselves.  Our essences and theirs are linked," replied her Father.

"Are they very dangerous to us?" said Mrs Coulter.

"Yes.  So dangerous that even if we defeat them we will probably die."

"What, die forever?"

"Yes, Marisa.  Die forever.  Do you not, as do I, weary of this tedious immortality?"

"Yes," mused Mrs Coulter.  "I too long for respite from remorse."

"Then will you come with me?" asked Lyra.

"Yes!" chorused her parents.

They linked mental arms and embraced, for the first and last time, in a great family hug.

Then Lyra sent out her questing imagination and the brilliant tunnel opened up before them…

Next - into battle!!


	16. The End Of Eternity

They also serve who only stand and wait…

Will and Pantalaimon waited, hand in paw.  "Lyra knows what she's doing," said Pan.

"I know," replied Will.  "I just wish she'd tell me sometimes."  Pan rubbed Will's chest near his heart, to ease the pain of his beauteous missing Kirjava whom Pan wished he could see again too.

The pustulent Vomitous Crudes were still hovering by the wall.  They did not move.  Perhaps their despicable alien desires were satiated for the moment.

It was a lovely summer's afternoon; or it would have been if it had not been for the salient vileness by the old brick wall.  The village was serene otherwise.

Suddenly there was a brilliant flash!  Lyra and her parents appeared in front of the astonished and relieved Will and Pan.  Lyra looked just like her usual self.  Her parents…

Amorphous were their shapes; each with a dark iridescent heart, each limned with lambent violet flames.  Their timeless spell in the Void had leached their human frames of coarse matter until only their vital essences remained.

The spirit-form that had once been Lord Asriel advanced on the Vomitous Crudes.

"Yield and depart!" he ordered authoritatively, for he had been a man accustomed to command.

"We shall not go!" rumbled the leading Crude.  "We shall stay and relieve your world of its freight of stupid humans and their stupid minds.  Stupid, stupid!  All you of Earth are idiots!"

The two ethereal beings held each other and spirit-kissed.  Then, trailing coruscating purple fire behind them, they rushed precipitously across the green, straight towards the alien forms.  The grass sparkled orange and blue where their feet passed.

With a screaming howl they passed through the malodorous yellow Crudes, again and again and again.  Each time, the foul alien bodies swirled around them, trying to envelope and crush them.  Each time Asriel and Marisa escaped their evil cloud-clutches - each time they suffered agonies from the Crudes's terrifying devil-strikes.

But wait!  The Crudes were breaking up and diffusing!  They were becoming misty and vague!  A spirit-wind rose up from the West, dissipating their execrable foulness!

When the last Vomitous Crude had dissolved into nothingness, the spirit-Asriel and spirit-Marisa flew back to Will and Lyra.  They looped around them in a final orbit, their ethereal corporations now faded and indistinct.  Each heard a whispered message in their ears as the heroic phantom forms passed them.

"Goodbye, Lyra.  We love you."

"Farewell, Will.  Look after Lyra for us."

Then the two forms linked and, clothed in glorious crimson flame, they soared upwards to the heavens, where they hesitated for a timeless moment, and then exploded into a burst of dazzling stars which blazed in fiery splendor above the village green before fading away into nothingness.  At last Asriel's and Marisa's atoms were redeemed; free to pass beyond the worlds to find their daemons and eternal peace.

Stunned, awed and amazed by the radiant effulgence of her parents' rapturous apotheosis, Lyra threw herself joyfully into Will's ardent embrace. The children stood arm in arm and wept happy tears for Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter.

"Now!" said Lyra eventually.  "Where are Mary and Mabel?"

Oh gosh!  Are the girls safe now?


	17. The Return Of Hope

Hope; where hope was lost.

Mary and Mabel and their daemons and Timmy the dog were sleeping peacefully on the green grass by the church wall.

"Wake up, lazybones!" shouted Will and Lyra in the girls' ears.  Mabel and Mary stirred, yawned and sat up.  Timmy the dog, who had been lying next to them, barked joyously.

"Hello, Lyra," said Mary.

"Where've you been?" asked Mabel.

"What've you been doing?" asked Mary.

"Oh, here and there, this and that," said modest Lyra.  "This is Will."  She pointed to Will, who was hanging back as he was not used to the society of girls, except Lyra of course.

"Is this really the famous Will?" asked Mabel.

"He's shorter than I thought he would be," said Mary.

"He's not as good-looking as you made him out to be, either."

"Positively homely."

"A tad on the stout side."

"Almost portly."

"Plump, even."

"No, not plump.  Well-built, maybe."

The girls' voices faded into the distance as they walked back to the farm.  Will and Lyra were left alone together.

"Lyra, I have to go soon.  The pain is getting worse and worse."

"It was never this bad before, in the Land of the Dead."

"No.  But our daemons hadn't settled before, either."

"I suppose that must be it."

Will grimaced with the pain in his heart.

"I must, I have to, go now.  I must find Kirjava or I'll die."

"I know.  I don't know whether to feel happy or sad."

"Happy that we have found each other again.  Sad that we have to part again."

"Yes, that's it."

They were quiet for a few minutes, clinging in each other's arms.

"Oh, before I forget…" Will gave Lyra a photo of himself.  Lyra giggled.__

"How old were you when this was taken?"

"Six.  It's the only picture I could find!"

"I love it just the same.  Thank you."

"That's Ok.  Lyra - say we'll meet again."

"Yes, we'll meet again.  I don't know where, or when."

They walked slowly over to the village pond.  "Remember," Lyra said.  "Imagine that you're cutting a window back to your own world."

"I'll remember."  They kissed just once more.  Then Will knelt by the side of the pond and put his head under the water.  Lyra held it down with all her strength.  Will tried not to fight her, but he could not help struggling.  Lyra closed her eyes and pushed hard on the back of his head.  A few bubbles rose from Will's mouth, and suddenly he was gone, carried away by the power of imagination, back to his own world.

"Only in peril of our lives…" murmured Lyra.  She wandered blindly across the village green.  She would weep, but not yet.  There was hope now where hope had been lost before.  She knew that she and Will would find each other again one day; but only when they _needed_ to.  Simply wanting to would never, could never, be enough by itself.

Lyra walked slowly up the lane.  It was teatime, and she was hungry.  The others would be waiting for her at Brookfield Farm and, after all, tomorrow was another day.  She still had the rest of her holidays to look forward to.  Anything could happen…

That's the end of my story.  I do so hope you enjoyed it.  _Thank you_ to everybody who has helped me with it.

Love,

    Daisy.**__**


	18. Epilog

Epilog

While Lyra was enjoying a hearty farmhouse tea in her world, Will sat on the bed in his bedroom.  Kirjava was watching _Home and Away_ on the TV, but Will had no eyes for it.  He was seeing things, remembering things, that he had spent the whole of the last year trying to stow away and forget in the lumber-room of his mind.

Like Lyra, Will had been trying to find a way to settle back to ordinary life after his metaphysical adventures.  He envied the children in _The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe_ who had been able to return to normality after being Kings and Queens of Narnia.  If only he could find a way to do the same thing!

There was a bag of potato chips hidden under his bed.  He had been told to ease off on the junk food, but sometimes only eating could ease the pain of his enforced separation from Lyra.

Will reached down for the bag of chips, but his searching hand found something else…

The Knife!  Will had kept the fragments, safely wrapped up in a roll of foil.  They were as sharp as ever, and he still had the knifepoint – the point that could slice windows between the worlds.

Will thought.  The angel Xaphrania had told Lyra and him that they would one day be able to use imagination to travel between the worlds.    Xaphania had not told them the whole truth - that daemons could not accompany their humans when they traveled in that way.

Will felt angry, hurt and betrayed.  Lyra and he had not been lied to by the angel; but she had not told them the whole truth either.  He did not consider that angels had no daemons; so how could Xaphania have known?

One thing he did know.  The Knife had been broken before, and mended again, by Iorek Byrnison, the armored bear and expert metallurgist.  

He walked down the stairs to the kitchen, where his mother, who was now on proper medication and feeling much better, was making bubble-and-squeak for their tea.

"Mum," he said, " I'd like to do an extra subject at school next term."

"Oh yes, dear, and what's that?"

"Metalwork.  I want to learn how to forge iron and steel."  

Mrs Parry smiled.  It was marvelous to see her son getting involved in his schoolwork again.  Everything was going to be all right after all!


End file.
